VCUarts Uncharted

Carmenita Higginbotham, Ph.D.

• VCUarts • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Art historian and dean of VCU’s School of the Arts Carmenita Higginbotham, Ph.D., discusses her unexpected journey to becoming the go-to expert for everything from Edward Hopper to Mickey Mouse.

This episode also features guest Christiana Lafazani, associate dean for faculty affairs and research at VCUarts. 

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About Carmenita Higginbotham
Carmenita Higginbotham is an art historian whose research and scholarship examine 20th century American art, urban art, race and representation, and American popular culture. She has lectured extensively on the history of American art, popular visual culture and art film. She has been a featured scholar and consultant in documentaries and in interviews with PBS, The History Channel, CNN, CNBC and The Washington Post. She has served as a peer referee for Art Bulletin, Art Journal and the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies and has acted in various capacities for the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the College Art Association and the Space Between Society (Literature and Culture 1914-45).

Prior to her current role, Higginbotham served as department chair of the University of Virginia Department of Art, and as assistant and associate professor in the departments of Art and American Studies. She has been affiliated faculty for the Carter G. Woodson Center of African American and African Studies since 2005. She received a B.A. in English and Art History from the University of Minnesota; a M.A. in Art History from the University of Massachusetts; and a Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of Michigan.

About Christiana Lafazani
Christiana Lafazani serves as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Research at VCUarts. She is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Interior Design, where she previously held the positions of Department Chair and Graduate Program Director for several years. Since joining the VCUarts faculty in 2003, Lafazani has played a significant role in both departmental leadership and broader academic administration. She was appointed to her current role in the Dean’s Office in 2019.

With a professional and academic career spanning over three decades, Lafazani brings extensive experience to her work as both a practicing designer and academic. Prior to her academic appointment, she held positions in the design industry, including work with an architecture and design firm specializing in corporate interiors, a role as prototype designer for a national electronics retailer, and as a design manager for an office furniture manufacturer.

Her research explores the intersection of professional practice and design pedagogy within the discipline of Interior Design. Specific areas of focus include the integration of emerging technologies into student work while supporting individual artistic expression, and the incorporation of sustainable practices in both design education and professional application. More recently, her scholarship has shifted toward design strategies that support neurodiverse populations, particularly adults with autism spectrum disorder, developed in collaboration with interdisciplinary colleagues across VCU.

Lafazani holds a Master of Fine Arts in Interior Environments from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Bachelor of Science in Interior Design from James Madison University.

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VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU. Music by Felipe Letão.

For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/uncharted.

Aaron Anderson:

You're listening to VCUarts Uncharted.

Aaron Anderson:

Hi, I'm Aaron Anderson.

Christiana Lafazani:

And I'm Christiana Lafazani.

Aaron Anderson:

And we are here with Dean Carmenita Higginbotham, Ph.D. How are you today?

Carmenita Higginbotham:

I am well. Thank you so much for having me.

Aaron Anderson:

The first question. Not all people in the arts describe what they do as research. But what you do is almost classically research in the tradition.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

Very much so. Very much so.

Aaron Anderson:

When you're on an airplane and somebody sits down and says, so what do you do? How do you describe what it is you do?

Carmenita Higginbotham:

Well, first and foremost I describe myself as an art historian.

Aaron Anderson:

Okay.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

For folks who don't know what that means, I tell people that I'm in a field where we decide what goes in the museum. That's a good way

Aaron Anderson:

of describing that. In today's political climate, there are some people who are anti-academia, anti-humanities, anti-bunch of stuff. So if they say, who cares about that? What difference does it make?

Carmenita Higginbotham:

Well, I think that if we think about all elements of society and culture, there is an implicit hierarchy. Right. There is a sense that some works of art, whether it's paintings or sculpture, whether it's theater or music, they set a particular kind of standard as being revolutionary, as somehow transforming and pushing us to the next plateau of what needs to and can be created. You need individuals who study those trends and eras who then are able to say, ah, that's the moment. That's the moment where everything changed. There was a new technology or there was a new type of conversation. That's really critical to be able to identify that. Art history is, for better or for worse, the story of winners. People who some reason changed something and through a variety of circumstances have propelled how we look, how we interpret. And other environments, say for recruiting students and trying to convince them to be an art historian because Because most children do not spend their childhood thinking, when I grow up, I want to be an art historian, either that or a fairy princess. That doesn't happen very often. But in the past, when I've talked to parents and students, I say that art is a living and breathing thing. And in order for it to live and to survive, it needs three things. It needs someone to collect it, someone to conserve it, and someone to write about it. Art historians are the people who That is

Christiana Lafazani:

pretty great. So can I follow up on this? You just said that no child ever dreams of becoming an art historian or parent, maybe, depending on the circumstance. Can you talk about your way? How did you find art history as the thing you wanted to do?

Carmenita Higginbotham:

I was a student undergraduate and lost. I knew I wanted to be in the humanities, always wanted to be in the humanities. I was an English major. I was going to get my MFA. By the time I was entering my junior year, I was taking graduate-level creative writing classes. I wanted to go to Iowa. I had this whole plan worked out. And I knew that I needed more credits to graduate. I went through the catalog. This is back in the ancient days where it was a book.

Aaron Anderson:

Physical thing.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

It was a physical thing with classes. So I'm thumbing, flipping through at work. I came across art history and art history had the fewest number of credits for a second major

Christiana Lafazani:

that is pretty great

Carmenita Higginbotham:

so I took an art history class and then I took another and then it became very clear art history art is like reading a novel a piece of literature it has syntax it has language it has rhythm and aesthetic choices that are being made I was just transformed I took a summer school class to fill in those extra credits and Next thing you know, I fell in love with a couple of works of art. And after graduation, I took a year working in a job answering phones at an ad agency. And I realized I want to go to grad school. I waited too late. And so the English programs I wanted to get into weren't really happening. But there was a late art history program.

Aaron Anderson:

This was not the original plan. No, not at all. You're dean of a major school of the arts. And art was not really in your plan A.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

Art In terms of the visual arts. Okay. Literature, yes. I always knew I wanted to somehow engage with that. And getting a PhD, I just wasn't sure. But I believe in serendipity. I believe in taking a chance. And when, let's be honest, when you're 20, you can do that when you're 19. You get all the time in

Christiana Lafazani:

the world.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

You get all the time in the world to figure it out. I had a great family who was like, take the time because you won't get it once you graduate.

Aaron Anderson:

Right. And you said something else about fairy princesses. That's right. Here's a transition. So you've been watching documentaries on Edward Hopper and Mickey Mouse.

Christiana Lafazani:

That's right.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

Like, how do you get those

Aaron Anderson:

together? Well, how did you become the go-to interview? Because I've seen a lot of interviews with you about Edward Hopper and about Mickey Mouse.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

Yes.

Aaron Anderson:

And those are not two things that I would normally stick together.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

No. Not traditionally.

Aaron Anderson:

No. How did you become the go-to interview? These are big ones, too. This is PBS. This is national. Yeah, all sorts of stuff.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

It is. It's exciting to have. No, it, again, a lot goes back to my education. I took, at one point, a Disney class as an undergrad. It was an English class, or it was art history, one or the other. And I had this renowned scholar there. It was a huge class, 300 students. I sat in the back of the room doing the crossword with the athletes. Failed the midterm. Got a C on the form. And I was thinking, what kind of person gets to see in Disney? It's harder to teach than a religion course. Really? There is no counter narrative to Disney. We are taught when we are young that there are other religions and we need to be respectful and aware that they exist.

Aaron Anderson:

But Disney's Disney.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

But Disney is Disney. And so I would constantly hit these brick walls with students. And I was like, I love this challenge. I love trying to get them to think critically about something with which they interact regularly throughout their whole lives. And I see art that way. as well. Art comes in and out of our lives.

Aaron Anderson:

It's a part of the fabric of life, but it's such a fabric that you don't even know that it's there.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

With Disney, you're a passive sort of consumer and the ideological messages within everything related to Disney goes unquestioned. And that was fun. And it's nice to have a class where everybody knows the texts when they show up. So I'm not trying to convince them to read Othello instead They've all seen Lion King. That's right. I can talk to individuals who are 80 or 90, and I can talk to individuals who are 80 or 9. Oh, wow. And they all have a connection to Disney. So they want to tell you. So the very first question I used to ask in class, and I usually ask individuals, what is your greatest Disney moment? It can be your association with a character. It can be going to the park. It could be going to one of the ESPN sports centers there. It can be anything. When I used to teach this subject, all strangers, 15, 18 students. Well, at one point, I got to 30 or 40. By the end of 75 minutes, they were hugging. They had found community just by that one question. So I can ask both of you, what is your greatest Disney moment?

Aaron Anderson:

Oh, I know this one because I have a daughter. I have a young daughter who loved Frozen so much. When the preview came out and she stomps her foot and everything, you know, that moment, that's Or when we work in the children's hospital and if we sing a Disney song, they will leap sort of forward out of their wheelchairs and go,

Christiana Lafazani:

I knew it. It's a visceral. It is a visceral thing. It's a visceral reaction. Yeah. Well, I can tell you I grew up in Greece, as both of you know. And every Sunday night we had the Disney show come on. So it was cartoons for an hour. And it was a moment that I waited almost a whole week as a young child. I have to tell you, I've been thinking about who has been my favorite character, and it's Tinkerbell. And you know why? Because she has the magic wand, and she does that little semicircle around the castle. And, you know, there's fairy dust, and there was this sense of magic for this eight-year-old all the way across the big pond that I still think about to this day.

Aaron Anderson:

I wish the people listening could watch. She was just doing She was. She did the wand.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

Yes. Case in point, it's international. Most folks attach to it at an early age, which is different than, I would say, the realm of high culture that we associate with art history, right? This is common language through narrative, through song, through memory and childhood. It's a creation of culture. And that is incredible. It changes everything. What I like about Tinkerbell is she's spirited. She is. She'll push back. She'll stomp her foot. Who's your favorite? I study it so much that it becomes very difficult to simply attach to a character. There's a difference between what character do you see yourself as and what character do you love. I love the classic Disneys and even though sometimes, okay, not even sometimes, she's so insipid and I just can't Oh, okay. Classic princess. That is amazing.

Aaron Anderson:

Right. And who do you see

Carmenita Higginbotham:

yourself as? Oh, yeah. I love this. Oh. I

Aaron Anderson:

think they should do a version where Mushu becomes dean of a school of the arts, an internationally ranked school of the arts.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

I think that would be the best one ever. I'm not sure anybody would watch that one. memories. How do you intercept and say if you're this close to this thing and you can interrogate it, you are a critical thinker.

Aaron Anderson:

There's so much there.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

There's so much there. And so as a teacher, definitely Disney. And then I have a media presence with Disney. So it's not, that's not going to go away anytime soon. My research, love to get back to the 1930s and 40s in American art. That's the

Aaron Anderson:

Edward Hopper

Carmenita Higginbotham:

stuff. That's the Edward Hopper stuff. That's the conversations about white and cultural constructions. That's understanding sort of frameworks of representation and particularly languages that we don't expect. So, for example, when you see a flower in a painting, it usually has some sort of symbolic reference in the history of Western art. Why can't we do that with people? Why can't we understand when you see a woman in a work, it's not just about, say, feminist politics or gender politics. But that's serving a role, a symbol. And that symbol could be transportation. We get so locked in with language and art. We get so locked in saying it's a flower, so the artist must love flowers. That's not the case. It's so highly symbolic. And when you attach it to people, folks put up brick walls in terms of interpretation. There's a lot of work to be done, and particularly in American art

Aaron Anderson:

and culture. And in that period in American history, why is that moment so So if you think about you have an

Carmenita Higginbotham:

economic boom and then a dramatic bust, you've got pressures coming from either side, a country who's recovering from an isolationist sort of policy but still felt the effects of the war. Then you have internal traumas that lead people to either band together or push against each other. And although historians may debate it, the thing that truly got us out of the Depression was World War II. So you've got this hotbed of creativity, of technology, of movement, of people. Those are some of the years of the black migration. You've got cities exploding, people moving throughout the western states and the Midwest. There's so much happening, and there's a lot of film. And that becomes a main vehicle for transmitting visual information, including aesthetic information. So I love it. Your article you wrote

Christiana Lafazani:

about what's missing from Edward Hopper's Nighthawks painting.

Aaron Anderson:

Everyone has read this. I'm sure everyone who's listening. I

Christiana Lafazani:

know it's right there. They probably have it on their bedside. Right up there with Disney. But you talk about everything that's missing from his artwork in general. I know that led me to start to look at faces that he paints. which is really interesting because looking at the painting, The Nighthawks, you talk about how there's absolutely, there are no words posted anywhere. There's no street sign. There are no people outside of this establishment. There's nothing on the walls other than this light. And it seems, it almost looks like a Hollywood studio where

Carmenita Higginbotham:

people are left over. Very much so. There's something sort of welcoming about it and idealized and clean. It aesthetically Painting-wise, you don't have to work hard as a viewer to interpret it. It's not abstract, but there are abstract qualities. And no, Hopper was one of those artists that everyone knows about. Maybe this is like the connection to Disney. It is an artist everyone knows about. Most folks, if they've spent time in museums, can say, wait a minute, I know about that Nighthawks.

Aaron Anderson:

Even if they haven't been in a museum, that's pop culture.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

That's pop culture. For sure. We've had a relationship with a brief one. Hollywood likes to reference his works, particularly film noirs. The Simpsons have been in that cafe. Like, it's that kind of, and maybe that is the similarity to Disney, not just the popular, but there is a way in which we are individually accessing these paintings. And what does it mean when we do that? What does that turn us into as viewers? What does that mean about culture? Because there are moments when Hopper's very popular. Over the course of your career, your research career, what has surprised you? The surprising element. Well, I'm an Americanist and it's an area of art history that a lot of folks don't know what to do with that. And it doesn't have a long history and it's not well respected in the same way because it doesn't have history. And so it was finding its way when I came up. And I was really surprised by that because it felt like there's a lot of wiggle room there. There's a lot to discover. And that's what I loved about it. There were works of art artists that had never been talked about. They'd only been cataloged but not interpreted. And I liked that intrepid spirit for me. It was open. It was a chance for me to find something new. It was supportive of that. I love that kind of just take the chance.

Aaron Anderson:

That's awesome. Again, I wish the listeners could see the look on your face because you do love this. You're not just sort of saying this.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

No, no. I'm smiling. And whenever I had troubles in the classroom or was uncertain, I could return to the scholarship and be buoyed. It's like a home base. It is. It was. And I think to be an art historian, you have to have that. That's why we pick what we pick. It's a reflection of our personalities. You can find a place. And what's interesting, if anybody has a chance to sit with art historians, there's a personality trait to the field, the subfield they go into. Those who go into Italian Renaissance, they'll become an Americanist. They have similar characteristics.

Aaron Anderson:

What are the characteristics of an Americanist?

Carmenita Higginbotham:

Americanists are, they kind of go rogue. That is pretty good. They are so comfortable going rogue. Yeah, we'll ask that question. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's just try it. What's the worst thing that could happen? Only 50 people read my article as opposed to 150.

Aaron Anderson:

And you don't have hundreds of years of the doctrine.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

Exactly, where you're not carving a sliver to understand what pencil work in four Michelangelo paintings or something that the Dutch did in the 16th century. again, when I was in the classroom, and we would have dinner parties or get-togethers with graduate students. And the question I would ask every faculty member was, what work of art would you go to jail for if you stole it? And it is never the work in their own time period. My favorite work of art in the history of art is actually Agoya. No one picks their area, but it's the thing. It's It's the creative expression that drew them in. I would say to young scholars, remember what that work is. That will be your touchdown as you move forward. But there's

Aaron Anderson:

something deeper in that.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

There's something that transforms you and fires all the cylinders about how to think critically, that you want to go in the archive, that you want to be involved in interpreting and responding to visual culture. So that's what I would say. That and have a thick skin. You need that. In the arts and in design, you need a thick skin. I think

Aaron Anderson:

that's actually a good mic drop moment for us. You know, remember why you got in this in the first place.

Carmenita Higginbotham:

Yeah, it is. It is why we're all here. And the research, there's so much still to do. And that's what I love about it. Well, thank you, Dean Higginbotham.

Christiana Lafazani:

Yeah. This has been really fun. Thank you.

Aaron Anderson:

VCUarts Uncharted is recorded in the Community Media Center in the Institute for Contemporary Art. Music by Felipe Letão. For more information, visit arts.vcu.edu/research-work.